Album Review: Chelsea – “Saturday Night Sunday Morning”

Chelsea were the big almost-weres of the early days of punk. Emerging on to the scene along with The Pistols, The Damned and The Clash in late ’76, the band split into two factions within a matter of months. The breakaway group, led by Billy Idol, became Generation X and went on to chart success, while singer Gene October kept the name but never really got anywhere the same level of record sales, despite a few rather good albums down the years (notably 1982’s powerhouse Evacuate)

2015 finds the band still plugging diligently away and Saturday Night Sunday Morning is a solid effort from these veterans. Veering more to the melodic side of punk, the likes of They Don’t Care What You Want and lead off track About Time show an impressive amount of energy and weld it to a toe-tapping Dr Feelgood style rock ‘n’ roll riff to good effect. The only thing that lets it down slightly is the rather tinny production (the vocals could definitely do with being a little bit higher in the mix), and the lack of a real standout track to properly lift this one up from being a good album to a great album. But still, considering how long they’ve been in the game, this isn’t a bad effort from Chelsea at all.

Final Thoughts

This is more the sort of album that'll keep Chelsea's audience of die-hard punk vets who've grown up with the band happy rather than win them any new converts, but at this stage of the game, you can kind of understand that. All in all, Saturday Night Sunday Morning is a decent album rather than a must-listen-to one, but I've certainly heard a lot worse from some of their peers down the years.

About The Author

Yorkshire born, Yorkshire bred, now living in exile in Hertfordshire. One time rock 'n' roll hellraiser now living a slightly quieter life but still trying to get out to see decent rock 'n' roll and listen to awesome new bands whenever the opportunity presents itself. Lives to take the rip, dies from retaliation...